kromem
I fondly remember reading a comment in /r/conspiracy on a post claiming a geologic seismic weapon brought down the towers.
It just tore into the claims, citing all the reasons this was preposterous bordering on batshit crazy.
And then it said “and your theory doesn’t address the thermite residue” going on to reiterate their wild theory.
Was very much a “don’t name your gods” moment that summed up the sub - a lot of people in agreement that the truth was out there, but bitterly divided as to what it might actually be.
As long as they only focused on generic memes of “do your own research” and “you aren’t being told the truth” they were all on the same page. But as soon as they started naming their own truths, it was every theorist for themselves.
They got off to a great start with the PS5, but as their lead grew over their only real direct competitor, they became a good example of the problems with monopolies all over again.
This is straight up back to PS3 launch all over again, as if they learned nothing.
Right on the tail end of a horribly mismanaged PSVR 2 launch.
We still barely have any current gen only games, and a $700 price point is insane for such a small library to actually make use of it.
Ever noticed how right before they get referred to as the sea peoples, a bunch of the Anatolian tribes get captured in 12 groups at the end of the battle of Kadesh to be brought into Egyptian captivity?
And that in their first mention of them as sea peoples, Egypt is remarking that they have no foreskins (as opposed to the partial/dorsal circumcision popular in Egypt at the time)?
Where did Ramses III allegedly forcibly relocate them? Southern Levant?
Isn’t that where there’s a later cultural history with one of the earliest dated sections being a song about how one of their tribes “stayed on their ships”? That’s even the same tribe that is later on referred to as trading with Tyre in goods native to the Adana area of Anatolia along with the Greeks right next to them.
Also the same group where in the early Iron Age layer of the city named after them, Tel Dan, there’s Aegean style pottery made with local clay.
This local cultural tradition makes frequent reference to a “land of milk and honey” even though there’s only ever been one apiary found in the region, which was importing Anatolian bees for its hives, is one of the earliest places a four horned altar is found (a feature of later Israelite shrines), and was regularly requeening their hives (I wonder if they knew it was a female and if that had anything to do with why the alleged author of the aforementioned song, who was their leader and prophet, was a woman named ‘bee’).
Of course, the apiary gets destroyed around the time that cultural history claimed a guy deposed his grandmother, the Queen Mother and took power, instituting the first of a series of later patriarchal reforms.
Gee, I wonder if maybe there was something to all that, and if it maybe left a mark in other ways.
Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt of a response from Claude Opus on me tasking it to evaluate intertextuality between the Gospel of Matthew and Thomas from the perspective of entropy reduction with redactional efforts due to human difficulty at randomness (this doesn’t exist in scholarship outside of a single Reddit comment I made years ago in /r/AcademicBiblical lacking specific details) on page 300 of a chat about completely different topics:
Yeah, sure, humans would be so much better at this level of analysis within around 30 seconds. (It’s also worth noting that Claude 3 Opus doesn’t have the full context of the Gospel of Thomas accessible to it, so it needs to try to reason through entropic differences primarily based on records relating to intertextual overlaps that have been widely discussed in consensus literature and are thus accessible).
This is pretty much every study right now as things accelerate. Even just six months can be a dramatic difference in capabilities.
For example, Meta’s 3-405B has one of the leading situational awarenesses of current models, but isn’t present at all to the same degree in 2-70B or even 3-70B.
Lucretius in De Rerum Natura in 50 BCE seemed to have a few that were just a bit ahead of everyone else, owed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus.
Survival of the fittest (book 5):
"In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn’t do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.
For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.
Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now."
Trait inheritance from both parents that could skip generations (book 4):
“Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair. Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh. For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be.”
Objects of different weights will fall at the same rate in a vacuum (book 2):
“Whatever falls through water or thin air, the rate Of speed at which it falls must be related to its weight, Because the substance of water and the nature of thin air Do not resist all objects equally, but give way faster To heavier objects, overcome, while on the other hand Empty void cannot at any part or time withstand Any object, but it must continually heed Its nature and give way, so all things fall at equal speed, Even though of differing weights, through the still void.”
Often I see people dismiss the things the Epicureans got right with an appeal to their lack of the scientific method, which has always seemed a bit backwards to me. In hindsight, they nailed so many huge topics that didn’t end up emerging again for millennia that it was surely not mere chance, and the fact that they successfully hit so many nails on the head without the hammer we use today indicates (at least to me) that there’s value to looking closer at their methodology.
